Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
This is from pages 67 to 76 of Constructing Jesus (2010) by Dale C. Allison. Allison begins with the evidence for the twelve. 1 Corinthians 15:5 is the earliest reference we think we have to the twelve. The letter is usually dated to the mid-50s, twenty or twenty-five years after the usually accepted date of … Continue reading “The Twelve: Dale Allison’s argument for their historical reality”
If the Gospels were written as “biographies” of Jesus, or were meant to be read as “history”, does this mean that we can expect to find only factual details in them? Or if not entirely factual, must we give the benefit of the doubt that beneath a certain amount of exaggeration there must have been … Continue reading “Fiction in ancient biographies, histories and gospels”
The introduction of Thomas L. Thompson’s and Thomas Verenna’s edited volume, Is This Not the Carpenter?A Question of Historicity has been published on The Bible and Interpretation. The first essential step in any historical inquiry This is a heartening introduction to the essential basics of valid historical methodology that has been very fudgy in the … Continue reading ““Is This Not the Carpenter? The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus”
The stated purpose of Maurice Casey’s book Jesus of Nazareth is “to engage with the historical Jesus from the perspective of an independent historian.” Casey explains what he means by his independence: “I do not belong to any religious group or anti-religious group. I try to . . . establish historically valid conclusions. I depend … Continue reading “Maurice Casey on the Christ Myth–Historical Jesus Divide”
Understanding how the Gospels came to be written, understanding what they are as literature, is surely a critical part of understanding the origin of Christianity. Surely one of the most central images of Christianity is that of Jesus knowingly traveling voluntarily to his death in Jerusalem. What I find strange is the extent of scholarly … Continue reading “The things Jesus could foresee: history versus story”
Scot McKnight of recent controversial article fame, devotes an entire chapter in his book Jesus and His Death to a discussion of the historiography of New Testament scholars, and writes: In fact, the historiography of historical Jesus scholars is eclectic and often unconscious or uninformed of a specific historiography. (p.16) Biblical scholarships’ ignorance of the … Continue reading “Scholarly attempts to “explain” historical methods for Jesus studies (1)”
Reading James Linville’s Israel in the Book of Kings (introduced in my previous post) I can’t help but notice resonances with the methodologies and assumptions largely taken for granted by New Testament scholars. The same issues of assumptions of historicity and lack of evidence bedevil (or at least did much more so in 1998 when … Continue reading “Gospels and Kings”
Even scholars who are attempting to find an “independent” and “socio-economic” explanation for Christian origins (such as James Crossley) are, like virtually all scholars involved in this quest, “driven by the Christian imagination” itself. Burton L. Mack explains the nature of this bias in his introduction to A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins. … Continue reading “The confessional bias of scholarship’s quest for Christian origins”
I don’t recall hearing many references to the works of Philo as a source for the Gospel of Mark. Maybe there are good reasons for this that I have yet to learn. Philo was a Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in the early part of the first century. He would have been in … Continue reading “An overlooked source for Mark’s gospel?”
To argue for a nonhistorical Jesus has been ignorantly compared with arguing “Creation Science” (“Intelligent Design”). So it is interesting to read the following from one of the foremost public critics of Creation Science: Of course, there are scholars who are more openly secular humanist, and are willing to depart from the religionism that permeates … Continue reading “The legitimacy of questioning the historicity of Jesus”
Jesus Seminar co-founder Robert Funk has a lot of interesting insights into the gospel texts. But he (along with probably a vast majority of his biblical studies colleagues) also carries a few assumptions that set his historical studies a world apart from the methods of historians of nonbiblical themes. But first the good rule that … Continue reading “Honest to Jesus: Robert Funk’s mix of good, contradictory and overlooked “rules of evidence””
(revised a bit of an hour after first posting) Craig Evans writes of his astonishment that Robert Price concludes that the Jesus Seminar is too optimistic in attributing even as much as 18% of the Gospel sayings and deeds of Jesus really were said and done by Jesus the evidence for the historical Jesus is … Continue reading “‘Fabricating Jesus’, ch1. Evans on Robert Price, and comments on “trained” historians”
David Hackett Fischer back in 1970 in his Historian’s Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought, discussed this fallacy one sometimes encounters in discussions of the history of early Christian origins and biblical studies. It refers to using widespread opinion as a method of verification. Often I’ve noticed this coupled with an argument “from authority” … Continue reading “The fallacy of the prevalent proof”